SHORE, ProBleu, BlueLightS: Empowering the next generation of students through ocean literacy
With our sister projects ProBleu and BlueLightS, we share one goal: strengthening ocean and water literacy across Europe by promoting education, community engagement, and inclusive participation. We work to achieve this through open calls that give schools, educators, and communities the opportunity to take action for environmental awareness and sustainable practices.
As 2 of our 3 projects are coming to an end this year, we wanted to highlight our collaboration with a meaningful final push: a common video produced with Horizon Results Booster, a joint publication, and a joint flyer.
Joint video:
This video highlights how together with our sister projects, we are empowering European schools to take action for ocean and water protection through hands-on learning and collaboration.
Joint publication:
Our joint publication, “Blue Schools in practice: how European classrooms explore water and ocean challenges“, was published in Science in School, the European journal for science teachers. It shows how the three sister projects, ProBleu, SHORE, and BlueLightS, support schools across Europe through practical tools, expert guidance, and ready-to-use teaching resources such as lesson plans, classroom activities, and protocols, as well as dedicated funding. All three projects share the same aim: helping more schools join the Network of European Blue Schools (NEBS), which has already grown to over 1,300 schools across Europe and beyond in 2026.
The article highlights real examples from each project, from students monitoring the Mediterranean Sea through citizen science, to young “Little Architects of the Sea” building artificial reefs in Italy, to students exploring the Baltic Sea and using music to talk about ocean conservation in Greece. Together, these stories show that ocean literacy can take many shapes, and that it belongs in every subject and every type of school, from coastal towns to landlocked regions.
Joint flyer:
We also developed a common flyer, “Strengthening Ocean Literacy and Youth Action for Healthy Oceans and Waters,” to present our shared objectives, challenges, and results throughout the duration of our projects.
Our latest clustering activities
Working alongside our sister projects has also meant learning together. Through joint webinars, shared booths, and common sessions, we regularly exchanged experiences, compared approaches, and built a stronger collective voice for blue education in Europe.
We co-organised two webinars that brought together the SHORE, ProBleu, and BlueLightS communities to share practical lessons and explore how to grow blue education across Europe.
The first, Twinning & Best Practices: Expanding the Network of European Blue Schools, explored how schools can deepen their engagement with ocean literacy and connect with peers across Europe. Each project shared its own tools and approaches, from teacher training and online courses to hands-on citizen science activities, showing how together they offer a clear pathway for schools at any stage of their blue education journey.
The second, Implementing Open Calls under Mission Ocean: Lessons Learned, focused on cascade funding as a way to reach schools and local actors efficiently and at scale. Drawing on real experience from all three consortia, the session offered an honest look at what works and what could be improved across the full lifecycle of an open call, from design to monitoring results.
At the European Maritime Day, SHORE joined BlueLightS, Tidal ArtS, and the A-AAGORA project for a shared booth and a series of public engagement activities around the theme of “Blue Senses“. Going beyond traditional formats, the activities combined art, storytelling, science, and community workshops to create meaningful and memorable connections with the ocean, engaging visitors not just through knowledge, but through experience.
Our final event also brought together the three sister projects for a dedicated session on Making Results Last: Exploitation and Sustainability in Mission Ocean Projects. Together, SHORE, ProBleu, and BlueLightS shared their key results and discussed how to ensure their work continues to have impact once the funding ends. The session also introduced the Mission Ocean & Waters Helix on Crowdhelix as a practical tool to keep the wider community connected beyond any single project’s lifetime.
ProBleu also joined our internal recap session, where partners exchanged openly about the challenges and successes of the project. These moments of honest dialogue between sister projects were some of the most valuable of our collaboration.
